


Always Sere, Never Blooming

by Smilla



Series: Victor Lives [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2008, AU, Episode: Jus In Bello, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-01
Updated: 2010-04-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 14:17:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean complicates everything, makes everything twice as hard as it should be, and it's all Victor's fault for wanting Dean the more broken he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Sere, Never Blooming

"I don't date guys," Dean says, the first time.

Victor smiles to Dean's smirk. "Does this look like dating to you?"

Dean tilts his head and looks pointedly at the door. "You letting me in?"

That's how it starts: with Dean knocking at his door in the middle of the night, and Victor letting him in.

-*-

 

"Shower first," Victor says, goes for stern and commanding. That deep rumble of voice he's learned over the years. Make it start in your gut, so everybody'll know who's in charge.

Of course, it doesn't work with Dean. It never does.

"Nope," says Dean, stops Victor from opening the faucet with a firm hold around his wrist. Victor looks at it, at Dean's hand: the skin's darker than the rest of his arm, with tan and mud.

"Okay," Victor says, doesn't move his own hand from the knob and Dean doesn't let his wrist go. Victor can feel the heartbeat through the touch, his own and Dean's. Fast, like after a run.

They barely have any space to move in the shower, both of them too big already for the small stall. It smells of mould, and Dean, of dirt, and Dean, of old soap crusted in the corners. And Dean.

It stinks, too, their combined sweat, blood – his own – the coppery scent of it close to his nose, and there's some profound meaning somewhere in that to be understood.

Dean raises his arm, swipes a thumb around the cut that still smarts on Victor's temple but doesn't bleed anymore.

"You've got to be more careful," Dean says and his breath is cool against Victor's mouth. Victor shivers, a full body ripple that's enough to annul the distance between them; it thrusts him snug against Dean's body. Chest and legs, and cock encased firmly in the dip of Dean's pelvis.

Dean closes his eyes, makes a throaty sound, a bit broken, a bit triumphant.

"Why are you here?" Victor asks, bends his neck to finally taste Dean's scent.

He wasn't expecting Dean. Not tonight that Sam's back from his reconnoitring trip. But, earlier, while Victor was peeling off his ectoplasm-soaked shirt, he had heard the shouts coming from the room beside his own, the one Dean had claimed as his. He'd stopped, shirt dangling from his hand, and listened to Dean's reasonable tone and Sam's frustrated voice rising over it. He couldn't make out the words being said, but they weren't important. Victor had given up trying to understand Sam and Dean and how they worked a long time ago, the mechanisms between them too complicated for Victor. He's still not sure he was even supposed to try.

After a long silence, Dean's door had banged shut with a loud boom that surely had woken up half of the hunters living in the house. Footsteps in the corridor and more silence. Five minutes later on Victor's watch, Dean had entered Victor's room without knocking, half-naked already and dripping graveyard mud and ectoplasm slime onto the floor.

Victor had closed the door behind him without saying a word, then he'd walked to the bathroom leaving an easy trail of stinky clothes for Dean to follow.

"Why are you here?" Victor says again.

Dean doesn't open his eyes and his answer sounds like a secret when he whispers it low in Victor's ear.

"Had to check you weren't bleeding to death on the carpet."

Victor snorts and bites the ridge of muscle on Dean's shoulder, licks the sweat from the hollow space between it and Dean's collarbone. Dean tastes earthy.

Dean's cock hardens beside his own and when Victor glances at Dean's face, Dean's smile is crooked, the left corner of his lips raised up, toward his eyes.

"You were the one who got thrown against a tree," Victor says, wonders if that was the point of contention, the subject of Sam's argument with Dean. He feels vaguely guilty that it happened on Victor's hunt, on the night of Sam's return.

He slides his hand on Dean's back where he knows the bruise is, and Dean interprets the move as an invitation to press more firmly against Victor's body, and maybe he's right. Dean usually is with this stuff, getting Victor's meaning a millisecond before Victor knows what he wants. It's not as unsettling a thought as it should be. Still.

Victor uses the extra pounds he has on Dean and pushes Dean's body against the wall, traps his own hand between the tiles and Dean's back. It's a stupid move, a stupid advantage he has on Dean; the only one he can claim, especially now that it's Dean's home turf he's walking on.

Victor calls himself a hunter, these days – Dean does, too, says, you're a hunter now, and it's half-mocking and half-mournful as if Victor's made the worst decision in his life – but Victor doesn't feel like the newbie he once was, fresh from Quantico and sure his SAC detested the mere sound of his voice. It wasn't easy, learning a new job when he's past the half mark in his life, two years shy of forty and a new career that leaves him hollow-eyed and bone-deep tired. He gets it now, he knows how to handle ghosts and werewolves, even demons, knows, too, that they're understaffed and overworked for this war they're fighting.

In a sense it's still like being a federal agent.

Victor should have retired to Florida.

But Dean's gasping, a long exhalation of air that ends with a grunt, and any thoughts of a nice retirement home at walking distance from a beach puff away into nothing.

Dean bears Victor's weight like it's a challenge. A lot of things are challenges for Dean. Dangerous challenges: how much blood he can spill without dying, how fast he can duck before being hit, bitten, clawed. Demons, Dean challenges openly, and it's still unsettling to see the lack of fear Dean shows.

Victor's uses his free hand to grip Dean's shoulder, fingers digging into muscle and bone. Dean's eyes widen, impossibly large. Doe-eyes. Bambi, Victor thinks, pushes the thought away immediately after. His focus shifts lower, instead, on Dean's lips and the curve of that smirk, still firmly in place. It's been a long time he's wanted to wipe it away. Never came around to do it when he was hunting Dean from one backwater town to the next, and the desire is still there now that he's hunting with him, like a never fulfilled wish.

And then Dean tenses, and it's sudden, yes, but not wholly unexpected.

Dean says, "Easy." No more than a croak, still aroused, but nervous when his eyes flicker left, and Victor can see he's calculating in how many moves he can open the shower stall and be gone.

It goes away as suddenly as it's come, but Victor lessens the grip on Dean's shoulders, takes his weight back.

Victor gets it now. After the many months he's fought beside Dean, he's learned that the seemingly least important stuff will trigger Dean's fight or fly reflexes. He knows why, of course, as hard as it is to wrap his mind around the concept. But he was there, beside Sam and a small army of hunters when Sam opened the hell mouth, and he saw Dean when he crawled back, naked and bleeding. Moving but dead. He saw Dean when he came alive under all their eyes.

Suddenly Victor doesn't feel like smiling, doesn't like this game anymore. He relaxes, makes it so Dean sees it: arms loose at his side, shoulders low and legs splayed open. It's a fucking matter of balance with Dean Winchester, and Victor's still learning where the equilibrium lies.

He rakes his brain for a distraction, finds it in the hunt, the job. "I talked with Ellen yesterday," Victor says. "We've lost Flagstaff."

Dean's breathing is rapid, his eyes brightly green and unfocused, as if Dean's watching something far away.

Victors holds his breath but Dean's pupils contract suddenly after, and his vigil's short.

"Vic," Dean says. "This your idea of fucking?"

Amusement and annoyance are so fake in Dean's voice Victor feels like weeping. Hates that it's become so important, this thing they have going, that was supposed to be just a fuck now and again. Dean complicates everything, makes everything twice as hard as it should be, and it's all Victor's fault for wanting Dean the more broken he is.

Victor sighs, eyes Dean's body, still smudged with dirt around wrists and neck, knows his skin must be as dirty as Dean's body. Victor wants to wipe away those stains.

"She says they're everywhere, now," Victor goes on, because what Dean says and what Dean means are two different things, and Victor wants to be sure of the meaning. Another kind of digging Victor's getting used to.

"I'll talk to Sam," Dean says. Laconic. And that's enough for Victor to know that the rip with Sam isn't as definitive as the slammed door implied. He hates the relief that comes with the realization, but he's lived through the months Dean ran from Sam and it hadn't been easy: Dean burning so hot Victor was afraid he'd wither away to nothing.

Dean shifts backward, leans against the wall with his shoulders only, the rest of him canted forward, and they're nearly touching again. It should disturb Victor how much he wants it, wants Dean. Has wanted him since the first time Dean came to him, requested Victor's attention and insinuated himself deeply under Victor's skin.

Who knows? Maybe it started earlier, during the nights spent staring at Dean's booking photos, dreaming of the day he'd put steel doors and cement between Dean and the rest of the world.

"You're a dull boy, Victor Henriksen," Dean says. "All work, no fun…."

No sense in denying it, so Victor doesn't, keeps watching Dean's body. The scarred puckers of flesh on his chest and legs are like letters of one of those mysterious alphabets he's seen Bobby Singer working on; they tell a story in fine print and a hundred of footnotes. So easily misinterpreted.

Victor should open the fucking faucet and let the water run, wash them both and then send Dean back to his room, doesn't want to. He doesn't, skims one of those scars with his fingertips, instead, the thinnest on Dean's flank, the small contact enough to put Dean's fire in his veins. Dean's left hand is suddenly at the side of Victor's neck, hard fingers curving behind it. Victor can only go when Dean pulls him against his mouth.

It's always a surprise. Not so much the softness of Dean's lips, a mystery in their own right, but the sizzling hotness of them, through the point of contact and downward to Victor's toes, a beam of heat that makes him shiver and press for more.

Dean bites his upper lip and Victor bites back, muffles a groan with a mouth full of Dean's breath, of Dean's tongue. This time when he falls into Dean, it's no challenge, no game. A need for closeness, of burrowing deeper into Dean's stifling heat.

"I'm gonna make you come like this," he whispers against Dean's lips, can offer only that in exchange. Heat for heat.

"Yeah," Dean says. "Yes." Opens his mouth to drag Victor back in, and Victor goes, wherever Dean leads him. He goes.

He makes it slow, Dean does too, rests his hand on the juts of Victor's hipbones, and Dean's thumbs dig in the soft tissue of Victor's navel, so gently Victor fears he'll become crazy with want.

Afterward, it's just a slow slip and slide, only sweat between them. The tip of his cock on the length of Dean's, the skin so taut and stretched Victor feels the blood rushing up.

It's an ethereal touch, not enough. Too much. And when Dean's right hand sneaks in that narrow space, it is just right.

-*-

 

"I don't date guys," Dean says, the first time.

Voices come from downstairs, a reediting of the days' hunt. Victor's left after the third drunken retell, gone upstairs and sat on his bed, head a bit fuzzy with cheap beer and even cheaper whiskey.

He clings to the door with both hands when Dean speaks, a bit surprised his invitation's been accepted. He looks at Dean's clothes, ragged and tattered, at Dean's unshaved face.

"Does this looks like dating to you?"

Dean tilts his head, sways back and forth, once. He's not drunk.

He says, "You letting me in or not?"

And Victor does.

\--


End file.
